SkylineDx, Mayo Clinic Collaborate on Melanoma Diagnostics

Prognostic test maker SkylineDx has announced a collaboration with Mayo Clinic to assist in the development of novel diagnostic tests intended to aid clinicians in the selection of therapies and in the care of patients with melanoma. The work will focus on optimizing and developing an algorithm to identify risk factors associated with metastasis. The algorithm was originally discovered and developed by Mayo Clinic dermatologist Alexander Meves, M.D., and his team.

“The collaboration with Mayo Clinic is a significant achievement for SkylineDx since this enables us to further extend our product offering by using our knowledge and experience in the field of bio-informatics in other disease areas outside of multiple myeloma, building upon our existing assets and capabilities,” said Dharminder S. Chahal, CEO of SkylineDx, in a press release. “We are very impressed with the work of Dr. Meves and his group and are delighted that they chose SkylineDx as their collaboration partner to address an unmet medical need and to improve the quality of life for patients.”

Meves and his tea first published their data relating to the treatment of melanoma in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2015, which showed newly uncovered molecular risk factors associated with sentinel lymph node (SLN) positivity in the primary melanoma. Meves will present updated data later this month at the 2018 American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting in San Diego.

For SkylineDX, a spinout of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the work with Mayo Clinic marks an expansion of disease area from multiple myeloma, which has been its primary focus. Its lead product is called a MMprofiler, a prognostic test that risk stratifies multiple myeloma patients by prognosis, either “high” or “standard” as a method to better choose treatments for each patient.